A psychological bias helps to explain why voters focus on the election-year economy

Voters have long displayed the perplexing inclination to reelect presidential candidates based on the performance of the economy during election years—a tendency that can turn elections into a game of chance based on the arc of the business cycle, rather than a careful review of the candidates’ performances. Andrew Healy and Gabriel Lenz examine this trend, concluding that voters actually prefer to evaluate candidates based on their entire terms. However, without the necessary information at their fingertips, voters simplify and use conditions at the end to represent the whole term.